BY THE ANCIENT HINDUS. 



235 



was in vogue among the ancient Hindus, if we can trust 

 the evidence of one of the oldest Sanskrit writings. 



In the preface to a Code of Gentoo Laws, or Ordinances 

 of the Pundits, occurs the following passage : "It will 

 no doubt strike the reader with wonder to find a prohibi- 

 tion of firearms in records of such unfathomable anti- 

 quity ; and he will probably from hence renew the suspicion 

 which has long been deemed absurd, that Alexander the 

 Great did absolutely meet with some weapons of that kind 

 in India as a passage in Quintus Curtius seems to ascertain. 

 Gunpowder has been known in China, as well as in Hindu- 

 stan, far beyond all periods of investigation. The word 

 firearms is literally Sanskrit Agnee-aster, a weapon of 

 fire ; they describe the first species of it to have been a kind 

 of dart or arrow tipt with fire and discharged upon the 

 enemy from a bamboo. Among several extraordinary pro- 

 perties of this weapon, one was, that after it had taken its 

 flight, it divided into several separate darts or streams of 

 flame, each of which took effect, and which, when once 

 kindled, could not be extinguished ; but this kind of agnee- 

 aster is now lost. Cannon in the Sanskrit -idiom is called 

 Shet-Agnee, or the weapon that kills a hundred men at 

 once, from (Shete) a hundred, and (gheneh) to kill ; and the 

 Pooran Shasters, or Histories, ascribe the invention of these 

 destructive engines to Beeshookerma, the artist who is 

 related to have forged all the weapons for the war which was 

 maintained in the Suttee Jogue between Dewta and Ossoor 



I explained on page 232 as d and I are often interchanged, dalayorabhedah, 

 is another form for ndlika, if not so it must be regarded as an altogether 

 false reading. The word nddika (given in Bothlingk and Roth's Sanskrit 

 Worterbuch as nadika) occurs nowhere else, and the only reference to it 

 in the just now mentioned Sanskrit dictionary is this passage from the 

 Kamandakiya, and there even the meaning of the word is not positively 

 stated, hut it is merely suggested that it may be a gong (wohl . . eine metal- 

 lene Platte, an der die Stunden angeschlagen werden), 



